Halftime: I liked how you phrased it on the latest album when you said ‘patriotic hustlers that kill for presidents.’

GZA: Conceal the truth but can’t hide the evidence. That’s a lot of cats nowadays. They always get caught. Lots of emcees use these lines but something you’ll never hear me say is you can catch me or you can find me. ‘You can catch me in the V.I.P. or you can see me on a..’ Not to knock those lines cuz a lot of people may read the article and think I’m getting at them. I’m not getting at you because hundreds of emcees use those, but its real simple and plain. It’s just something that I don’t do. I say this in every interview I don’t rhyme about clothes because in my writing it’s unnecessary. If I speak about a jacket it’s his jacket. His jacket fell off I don’t need to tell you the name, like ‘he shot up his Pelle Pelle or chinchilla.’ Knock it off. It depends on how you use it. Some people might have used it in a slick way but once I heard it fifteen times I don’t need to say chinchilla. I’ll speak about another fur or I’ll just say fur. It’s simple and plain but it would come off a lot stronger depending on how you use it in a sentence. I say vehicle or car. I might use the word ‘nova’ but I’ll be talking about a star while the average emcee will be talking about a car. There are many things to write about that’s why I don’t understand why so many emcees talk about the same shit. I said in the Masta Killa song ‘Life in the hood is an award winning film / lived out by savages who can’t escape the realm.’ It’s award winning in their eyes because it’s all they talk about. Like the one you said early ‘patriotic hustlers that kill for presidents’ that’s still in the hood.

‘I come from a place where they say death comes too soon / on the block where the hoods dance to a different tune / every night, every day hotels and foul play / it turns fatal in this hostile land of AKs.’ It’s more visual, it’s not like ‘yo son they was holding the block down / he hit him in front of the store / he was slinging keys.’ A lot of emcees think that if something is real bloody then it’s so real and so visual. I blew his brains out and they splashed on the back seat. That’s not visual.

Halftime: I just wish more cats would rhyme about what they are really doing. Then I think I could relate more. If you’re going to school then rhyme about school or if you struggling at a 9-5 then talk about that. Not a lot of people are doing that.

GZA: It’s just that most cats say they rhyme about what they live but most of it is boring. We all know somebody from the hood. If you from the hood you know people who either murdered somebody or know somebody that got murdered. We all know someone. How many people you know that say they gonna write a book about their life. We all feel that way. It’s all about how you put it. What’s gonna make your story interesting and different from all the cats that sold on the block and turned their money? It’s not only about what you lived, you should be able to use your imagination. You should be able to create stories and bring people into you’re world and make it believable. A lot of times I make up stuff and blend it in and take the best of both worlds and make it believable. That’s what a lot of artists aren’t doing. They want to write about what they’ve seen or lived and not about what they think. It’s ok to think. There are so many things to write and talk about in the world. I could write a song about being in an elevator and make it interesting. Can you imagine watching a movie that takes place in one room but keeps you interested the whole time? Artists don’t seem to have that in them.

Halftime: When we came up it wasn’t the beginning of hip hop but we were around for the Kanes and Rakims. I see the hip hop landscape and I understand it but it still strikes me like how did it get so wack. But Marcus was saying maybe it’s a generational thing and cats today are gonna be like damn this is when hip hop was dope. But I can’t help feeling like the skills have just eroded.

GZA: Nowadays it seems like its cool to be dumb. Emcees were a whole lot more lyrical back then. Like Rakim, how can you have stuff so hard but so commercial. That’s what emceeing is about. Not being commercial and watered down or gimmicky. He didn’t use profanity and I don’t think he did it on a Will Smith level like ‘I don’t curse.’ Will stressed that. I don’t use profanity either really. I haven’t on the last few albums. I might say one or two words that you can censor but it’s not in my writing. It doesn’t come out like that, but it still has that hard aura. Kane was doing lyrical songs that were hard and commercial. A lot of cats from that era were very lyrical. You can name at least ten emcees back then that was in the spotlight at the same time that was all lyrical and all different. Try to name ten now in the spotlight. They are all similar. Everyone is following and biting. No one is really writing anything lyrically profound. We are giving emcees the title of greatest and they weren’t lyrically skilled like that. Come on now.

Halftime: I guess that’s what’s really getting to me. Back then the dopest artists were in the forefront. Now you can find dope artists but you have to search mad hard to find them.

GZA: I used to walk around town battling cats on some lyrical stuff. The song I did off the last album called ‘Audo Bio,’ that was my introduction to hip hop. How me and RZA used to go to the Bronx. I said

‘Me and RZA made trips to the BX / a mass of ferocious emcees, a town of T-Rex / giants in every way / rap flows for every day / we knew we would get a reward with a price to pay / the basic training was beyond entertaining / just a cadence of a verbal expression self explaining / I wore my boots out from constant walks across the borough.’

That was our history. We used to challenge brothers. We kept it lyrically sharp, challenged the best, walked all around and kept it respectable. Battling was on a respectful level. It was about verbal skills not smashing a cat out. Emcees just don’t have it nowadays. A lot of songs sound like they are off the head. ‘Here I am doing an interview / asking me a question don’t know who / I’m sitting in my crib / inside my son’s bedroom / ladies on the front…’ That’s how most rap sounds nowadays. It sounds ridiculous. That’s why I said ‘half these rap lyrics ain’t thought provoked / just a lot of beef till they get caught and smoked.’ That’s a metaphor cuz you smoke beef. Then I said the problem is never cured like you gotta cure pork or beef. That’s how I write.

Halftime: Where do you get your inspiration to write stuff like that. I heard you watch a lot of the History and Learning Channel.

GZA: Yea, I watch a lot of that. First, I think it just has to be in you. But emcees have to watch more stuff that you can learn from to expand your mind. I got a demo from a kid the other day and he’s talking the same shit on every track. ‘Ya’ll don’t want it, ya’ll don’t want!!’ Just beefin. Every track was and we sling those things and we bag those things. That’s not the visualz.

Halftime: I said that about how Houston is coming back right now. Some of them can rhyme like I feel like Slim Thug can rhyme but I peeped the album and by the fourth track its like son you’re really saying the same shit over and over again.

GZA: It’s like a repeat

Halftime: They even used the same slang. It’s like candy paint, trunk waving, sipping on some sizzurp. I’m alright already. Everything is candy paint. Even cats who can rhyme aren’t even advancing it.

GZA: You just gotta tap into your brain. I used a word like pyroclastic. That’s how I describe my flow. A pyroclastic flow is something that’s sparked from a volcanic eruption. It moves tremendously fast and its hot hot fire. Everything in its path turns to ash right away. That’s how I describe my flow as far as slang. Rakim had a song where he said ‘I’m the creator of the alphabets let’s communicate / when I translate the situation straight / no dictionary is necessary to use / big words do nothing but confuse em or lose.’ You know simple, but killing them though. I don’t even gotta rhyme against a cat. It’s how you use your words. As far as inspiration I get inspiration from many things because I’m in tuned with nature to a degree. I love the way things look the trees and the colors. I love how the universe works. I love water. I’m attracted to these certain things so I can incorporate them into my rhymes without actually talking about it in that sense. I have a rhyme where I say:

‘My universe it runs like clockwork forever / my words are pulled together sudden change in the weather / the nature and the scale of events don’t make sense / a storm with no warning you’re drawn in by immense/ gravity that’s gone mad, clouds with dust and debris / moving at colossal speeds that crush an emcee / Since this rap region is heavily packed with stars / eternal mirror and telescope known as the gods / from far away we blink as a light that strobe / with great distance of space between precise globes / that travel in a circular order like the tape in your cassette recorder / filled with corporate slaughter.’

So I’m able to watch a program on the universe and still incorporate it into emceeing without actually saying Mars is here or whatever. It’s not about being preachy or coming off like a teacher. It’s being able to incorporate stuff into the rhymes. On the Wu Banga 101 song I said ‘My too advanced digi stance made the CD enhanced / I move with the speed and strength of ants.’ People sleep on ants but no one would think about using an ant. Ants can carry 100 times their weight moving at the speed of a human going 100 miles an hour. I’m able to watch something and get a whole lot from it. I can speak about water and not come off as scientist or come off nerdy. I never come off like that but at the same time I want to entertain and have you be able to listen to something over and over and always catch something new in the writing. That’s how it should be.

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Posted by Jbutters on Saturday, April 15th, 2006 and is filed under HIP HOP ICON SERIES.